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Will Spain finally escape from recession? Will we finally see an improvement in euro-zone employment? And is the U.K. housing market overheating? This coming week in Europe may provide some of the answers with a raft of macroeconomic data on tap.

That was the rebuke for U.S. lawmakers in a press conference after a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers on Monday. The comment, from Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, addressed the concern about international economic damage if Congress triggers a U.S. default by failing to raise the debt ceiling by Thursday.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi meets the press for his monthly news conference in Frankfurt at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. Draghi is expected to strike a dovish tone in an effort to curb investor enthusiasm over signs of a long-delayed economic recovery in the euro zone. The ECB left rates unchanged earlier Thursday, but Draghi is widely expected to reiterate his bombshell July pledge to keep rates low for an \”extended period.\” MarketWatch\’s William Watts will be live-blogging the news conference here.

8:20 am (EDT)

Mario Draghi kicks things off in about 10 minutes. While the euro-zone economy is showing sings of picking up steam, second-quarter growth of 0.3% did little to reverse the prolonged slump that proceeded it and business surveys point to only "very modest" growth in the near term, notes Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics, in a note. That makes it unlikely the ECB staff will significantly upgrade growth projections for this year. And Draghi, mindful of market skepticism over the ECB's commitment to keeping rates low for an extended peiros, is likely to strike a dovish tone and may even suggest that further rate cuts are a possiblity, she says, although he's not likely to give into calls to tie the ECB's commitment to low rates for an "extended period" to specific economic targets such as the unemployment rate.

The euro zone finally emerged from a six-quarter recession in the second quarter, but it could be too early to celebrate. Unemployment is still stuck at a euro-era high and it could take years to close the output gap created during the crisis.

The doom and gloom in Europe could be over soon as the region looks set to emerge from recession. Euro-zone PMI data out on Wednesday confirm that growth is on the agenda and point to a brighter outlook in quarters ahead. The composite euro-zone index climbed to an 18-month high of 50.4 in July, up from 48.7 in June and above the 50-mark that separates expansion from contraction.

With Europe’s economic problems well publicized, politicians and technocrats on the old continent regularly trample over each other in the rush to point fingers of blame. Yesterday, Viviane Reding, the commissioner responsible for the EU’s justice portfolio, got in on the act. \”The time of the troika is over,\” Reding said at a citizens\’ dialogue in Heidelberg, Germany, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

As Portuguese bond yields soar amidst worries that the nation\’s governing coalition could collapse, the biggest fear is that the panic could spread. Spain, geographically and economically linked to Portugal, is the most likely next target, but all of the euro zone\’s struggling nations, often referred to as a periphery, could be at risk.

The Federal Reserve is set to meet this week, where it may clarify its stance on when it plans to begin winding down its monetary stimulus program, but a growing clamor of market forecasters are saying the outcome of global central bank monetary policy may have an outsized impact on the euro zone. And that includes the haven bond yields of Germany and France.

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